New Year driving resolutions

AA members resolve to drive less despite plummeting pump prices

Pump price-scarred UK drivers will continue to keep their car mileage in check going into 2015 – despite the cost of petrol being at its lowest since early March 2010.

New Year resolutions show that 12% of 16,165 AA members, who responded to an AA-Populus motoring panel poll, intend to drive more economically. Resolving to walk more takes top spot, with 13% intending to do so next year.

Just over half of the sample (52%) will make a New Year resolution.

The decision to keep car costs down, although perhaps surprising when set against the nearly 18p a litre fall in the price of petrol since July (131.7p a litre then to 113.8p now), chimes with other evidence.

Recent HM Revenue and Customs figures showed that November’s petrol consumption had increased just 1.3% despite much lower costs. Year-on-year, UK drivers were using less petrol last month (1.498 billion litres) than in November 2013 (1.523 billion litres) when petrol was nearly 17p a litre more expensive (130.4p).

Top New Year driving resolutions

I will try to walk more – 13%

I will try to drive more economically – 12%

I will try to cycle more – 5%

I will try to drive more safely – 5%

I will try to drive less often – 5%

Hopefully, 2015 won’t become the year of the male couch potato

Edmund King, AA president

Canny bunch

“AA members are a canny bunch, as are UK drivers as a whole: bitter experience of pump-price surges since 2008 tells them that the current collapse will be met by a rebound at some time. They took around two years to adapt their car travel patterns to deal with record petrol and diesel prices and they won’t go back to their old routines overnight,” says Edmund King, the AA’s president.

“A significantly greater proportion of women have resolved to walk more next year, 16% as opposed to 11% of men. Hopefully, 2015 won’t become the year of the male couch potato.”